WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he would meet Vladimir Putin for upcoming talks on the Ukraine war even if the Russian leader had not sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Thursday’s statement, which contradicted earlier reports that a Putin-Zelensky meeting was a prerequisite for the summit, came after Trump gave Moscow until Friday to reach a ceasefire or face fresh sanctions.

But asked by reporters in the Oval Office if that deadline still held, Trump did not answer clearly. “It’s going to be up to (Putin),” Trump said. “We’re going to see what he has to say.”

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has been pressuring Moscow to end Russia’s military assault on Ukraine.

Russian president updates Xi on talks with Washington

The Kremlin said on Thursday that Putin was set to attend a summit with Trump in the “coming days,” but the Russian leader essentially ruled out including Zelensky.

Zelensky, meanwhile, insisted that he had to be involved in any talks.

When Trump was asked if Putin was required to meet Zelensky before a summit, the US president said simply: “No, he doesn’t.”

Putin has named the United Arab Emirates as a potential location for the summit, but this was not confirmed by Washington.

Meanwhile, Putin called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to update him on the latest US-Russia talks on the Ukraine conflict, the Kremlin said on Friday.

Putin informed Xi about “the main results of his conversation on August 6 with US special envoy Steve Witkoff,” while Xi expressed support for a “long-term” solution to the conflict, the Kremlin said, days before an expected summit between Putin and US President Donald Trump.

Next week?

The summit would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.

Three rounds of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul have failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire. The two sides remain far apart on the conditions they have set to end the more than three-year-long conflict.

Trump and Putin last sat together in 2019 at a G20 summit meeting in Japan during Trump’s first term. They have spoken by telephone several times since January.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that “next week has been set as a target date,” adding that both sides have agreed the venue “in principle,” without naming it.

However, Washington later denied that a venue or date had been set.

“No location has been determined,” a White House official said, while agreeing that the meeting “could occur as early as next week.”

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia launched its military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian bombardments have forced millions of people to flee their homes and have destroyed swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2025